Junkie markets hit sedate Swiss

Long-hours, high-octane workers that they are, city traders have long been rumoured to resort to occasional narcotic assistance to help them operate at top speed, all the time.

Now however, the markets appear doped too, whizzing up and down with the alacrity of a hopped-up tour de France cyclist, face as green as his spandex shorts, pedalling ludicrously fast through five Alpine peaks a day.

It is an age of accelerated finance, of bourses on speed. And stable Switzerland got its dose this morning.

The Swiss government stepped in to take a huge chunk of toxic debt from UBS. Credit Suisse, the other huge Swiss bank, announced it was raising cash privately, from Qatar.

And at the Swiss stock exchange, the trading charts looked as though the heart of the junkie market had finally given way, and was having the defibrillator applied.

Down and down went UBS shares, almost 8 per cent at one point, as if towards a horrible flatline.

But then, whoosh, the jolt from the state paddles reached investors, inanimate UBS lurched on the emergency room gurney and up the stocks climbed â€“ six percent. But then, as any dedicated viewer of the more hysterical hospital drama knows, rare is the defibrillation that works on the first go â€“ whatâ€™s the fun in that?

So it was with patient UBS. Down its shares plunged again, wiping off all those gains, worse, in fact, than before.

At half past ten, however, no doubt with the silent prayers of many, UBS started up again, shares pumping upwards again to recoup earlier gains. Down, up, down, up.

The time registered between the market low, at 18 Swiss francs, and market high, at 21.30, was precisely one hour and one minute â€“ not the kind of palpitations the Swiss are keen to see in the breast of the nationâ€™s most cherished financial institution.

The patient now appears more stable, as some Swiss investors decide that government action only shored up what was already a relatively strong position for Swiss banks in the current madness.

Today, the Herald Tribune ran a piece suggesting that, although Swiss banks are in trouble, Switzerland may be well placed to profit from the current crisis.

Earlier this week I wrote something similar-ish in the paper. But my main thought then was that Switzerlandâ€™s biggest export commodity to play in these troubled times is confidence. And it is clear that, with its markets and stocks shuddering up and down as though plugged into the mains, there is little supply of that.